This invention is related to a technique for monitoring the television viewing habits of individual test subjects and, more particularly, to accurately determining which people in a selected household are actually watching the television set.
Information about the television viewing habits of household members is important to various organizations. For example, the television networks can determine the popularity of their shows with such information and determine their advertising rates accordingly. Also, advertisers can ascertain to what extent their commercials are being viewed.
Various techniques are available to measure the viewing habits of household members. Such information can be obtained by interviewing people at random over the telephone or in person and asking them to recall what shows they saw within a given period as, for example, during the previous evening. However, since this approach relies on a person's memory and honesty, it is inherently subjective and inaccurate. Another technique involves obtaining the cooperation of a selected number of households. Each household is given a diary into which every household member is to insert his name and the television program to which the television set is tuned along with the time. However, making a diary entry requires a deliberate action on the part of a person who may not always remember or be inclined to make the entry. Thus, the data entry approach is prone to inaccuracies. Moreover, although one or more individuals can be in a room and enter themselves into the diary, this does not necessarily mean that any of them is actually viewing the program. Accordingly, any analysis based on the presumption that entries in the diary reflect actual program viewing is prone to error.
A variation on the diary-keeping approach is an electronic system with a keypad used to enter the information electronically which is otherwise written into the diary. However, this system also suffers from the above-mentioned disadvantages related to taking the trouble to make the entry and the possibility that people entered in the system and sitting in the room are not actually viewing the program.
Another technique currently in use is utilized in accumulating the widely known Nielsen ratings. The Nielsen approach includes a unit which is typically mounted atop the television set. The Nielsen viewing-habits-monitor is depicted by unit 10 shown schematically in FIG. 1. Unit 10 is connected to a conventional TV tuner 5. Unit 10 also includes a timer 12 connected to a recorder 14. With the arrangement of tuner 12, timer 5 and recorder 14, a record is kept of the particular channel to which the television set is tuned at any given time. Timer 12 stores the signal indicative of the channel to which the tuner is set at periodic intervals of, say, one minute on recorder 14. Recorder 14 includes a storage medium capable of retaining information corresponding to approximately one week of viewing. Modem 16 is accessible from a remote central monitoring station over conventional telephone lines. Periodically, as for example once weekly, the modem in a particular household is automatically dialed up and the information stored on recorder 14 is retrieved and transmitted over the phone lines to the central monitoring station. When retrieval is completed, a signal is sent to recorder 14 which erases it and readies it for re-use during the coming week. Although this technique is in wide use, its major failing lies in its inability to ascertain whether the individuals in the room are actually viewing the television set. In fact, it may even be the case that the television set is turned on and the channel to which it is tuned is being recorded while, in fact, no one is in the room. Therefore, it is readily seen that all of the techniques currently in use provide information which cannot be relied upon in analyzing the television viewing habits of individual household members.